


Closure

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 04:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rung visits Red Alert. Spoilers for MTMTE</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dellessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dellessa/gifts).



> sort of a follow up to [ Waiting Room ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/604010)

 

 

He'd hoped it would bring closure. He told all his patients, for millennia, the importance of getting to say goodbye. He told all his patients it helped.  
  
But here, in front of the cold storage drawer labeled with Red Alert's identity code--which he'd memorized from a thousand different session inputs--he couldn't say for sure that it helped.  
  
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later, in a few days, when everything stopped hurting, he could decide if it helped or not. But right now, it just felt hollow and sore.  
  
Rung laid a hand on the drawer, looking back over his shoulder at First Aid. "Can I?"  
  
First Aid nodded, stepping forward, and punching in a keycode that let the drawer slide. Rung could hear the locks disengage and the soft puff of chilly air as the drawer unsealed.  
  
"You want me to...?" First Aid gestured toward the far door over his shoulder. Rung shook his head. First Aid sidled discreetly out of earshot anyway, an awkward token of respect.  
  
The moment deserved respect, Rung thought, looking down at the darkened optics in the head. And he found, for the first time, he had no idea what to say.  
  
“…I’m sorry,” he managed, finally. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.” He’d been just slightly, well, dead, himself, or near enough. Still, that didn’t stop him from feeling bad, feeling remorse. If things had been different he could have done…something? Something. Anything.  
  
But that wasn’t right. Red Alert didn’t need him. He doubted anything he said would have helped, would have changed the other’s mind. And maybe, honestly, this was for the best. If nothing else, it showed that Red Alert had thought through options. Rung had no right to question, or to doubt that Red Alert hadn’t put thought into it.  
  
If he’d learned nothing else in their six hundred years of sessions, it was that Red Alert always, always thought things through. He wasn’t a rash or hasty mech, like Rodimus.  
  
Even the Institute had turned out to be real. When it came down to it, Red Alert had been right all along. What right did Rung have to question him now?  
  
“I think I’m sorry for myself,” he said. “That I wasn’t there. It means something to me, to feel like I’m helping. And I hope—I hope—you’d say that I had helped you. If not cured you, well, at least helped you cope.” Cope, as in what Rung himself was not doing right now.  
  
He smoothed a hand over the white helm, thinking with a sort of grim amusement how Red Alert would have hated the touch. “I just wanted to say, I guess, well…thank you. Thank you for trusting me, even when you didn’t really seem to. You trusted me enough to give me a chance, and that’s a, a very brave thing, Red Alert. In a way, you’re one of the bravest mechs I know.” It couldn’t have been easy, any day of Red Alert’s life, to struggle under the burden of his paranoia. Others made jokes—sometimes Red Alert did, too—but it wasn’t really very funny at all.  
  
“And I respect your choice.” That couldn’t have been easy, either: it was one of the basic drives of existence—to live, to not throw oneself towards death, but Red Alert had overridden it, in the slow, ritualized way of spark separation.  
  
First Aid scraped his foot on the floor, in an obvious signal. He gave a sheepish shrug. “Just, you know, have to watch the core temp.”  
  
Rung nodded. “Right. Of course.” He turned back to Red Alert, trying to find some comfort in the blank grey optics. “Anyway, I just wanted to say, well, not ‘goodbye’ because I have,” he cleared his throat of a sudden knot of tension, “I have every faith that we’ll revive you one day, when the time is right, and when _when_ that happens, I sincerely hope we can catch up on old times. As friends.”  
  
He stepped away as First Aid approached, turning his gaze from the long, sterile, gleaming silver drawer and as he walked away he tried not to make the ringing sound of the drawer closing seem so final.


End file.
